Digimon and the Chinese Market
Back when I was doing my economics degree, I learned how to read investment reports and I did the next logical thing for someone with autism and a hyperfixation on Digimon: I started to read Bandai Japan's yearly reports starting with 1997, when Digimon first launched. Now, due to my issues with investment Japanese and the fact that online translators were not that good, this also meant that I had to annoy two dear friends about those reports again and again. While I quickly learned how to read the actual tables of returns, gains and so on, they did have those columns on how their franchises were doing. And I quickly learned that they usually just put the "overseas market" for their stuff off as: "Oh yeah, we released this and that in the US, this in Europe, and this to Asian markets." And that was pretty much it. Because Bandai - like many companies - basically is partitioned into subsidaries with different investment reports. So, basically we have Bandai America, Bandai Europe, Bandai Asia, and Bandai Japan. While these days the Japanese reports go a bit more into oversea sales, that did not start until the late 2010s.
So, for the most part I never really thought about Digimon outside of my own country - Germany - the US (due to the biggest fansites being US run) and Japan. I kinda knew that the series was pretty big in Brazil, apparently, but that was it. Well, and I knew that from time to time Bandai Asia, and specifically China would get merchandise that the rest of the world would not get. Most notably some Digivices and V-Pets that were kinda cool looking but never got released outside of Asia. And there was D-Cyber of course. Which was cool, and thankfully got a translation. But that was it.
Well, until around 2015 I watched a documentary that someone had uploaded to Youtube. Tbh, I do not know how that documentary was called, but it had a couple episodes and was probably from around 2010 (maybe 2009, maybe 2011, but around 2010). It was basically about Chinese culture around learning and school and how children in different parts of China grew up. I was mainly watching as research for story I was writing back then. But then I noticed something: Digimon.
Yeah, in this absolutely not Digimon-related documentary, I saw... Well, a lot more Digimon merchandise, than I would have expected. One of the kids in Rural China was wearing a T-Shirt with Agumon. One of the other kids was in a soccer kid club, that had a Digimon mascot. And one of the city kids clearly had some Digimon merchandise in his room. Now, mind you, the documentary never mentioned the franchise by name in any way, but as an autistic person obsessed with Digimon, I was sitting there like: "Wait... Is Digimon kinda big in China?!"
Well, a couple years and three chinese-exclusive mobile Games later - one of them apparently featuring a whole ass story... Yeah, actually apparently Digimon is actually pretty popular in China o.ô
I think this is almost funny in a way, given that usually in the west we just do not think a whole lot about the chinese market in any way or form. Sure, these days, when it comes to movies, we will at times mention that indeed, a lot of companies are marketing their movies towards the chinese market. Or you will hear how the chinese game market is big. But that is it.
But in terms of Digimon, it seems that indeed China has a really strong market with a lot of people willing to invest in not only into Digimon merchandise, but also games and manga. I think most of us by now know, that there was a ton of exclusive Chinese manga.
While D-Cyber eventually also released outside of China (as did the Manhua adaptations of the first four seasons), neither Legendary Skies (a sequel of sorts to Frontier) or Battle released or even got so much as a scanlation. Same seems to go for the manga adaptions of Savers, Xros Wars and the Adventure remake. (At least according to Wikimon.)
All in all, I feel this is a rather interesting aspect of the fandom, that rarely is discussed.
Obviously the lack of discussion also has majorly to do with how little information on some of those Chinese things. We have a fairly good overview of the plot of New Century, and as mentioned got D-Cyber translated. But all we have from Legendary Skies is some single pages and a plot overview.
Now another Phone Game has released a couple of days ago - Digimon Source Code. Another one I will asume is going to have its own little story.
And... Yeah, I don't know. I am fascinated by this almost invisible part of the fandom.
